Game Dev Tycoon - The ultimate DRM
mod
So, this company Greenheart Games released a new game dev simulator called Game Dev Tycoon. Heavily inspired by Game Dev Story, but apparently made some big improvements, and although it looks the same, it plays a lot different. Pretty cool, as Game Dev Story was really well done. But, that's not where the big story comes from in this case.
Greenheart Games decided to create the ultimate DRM. If you bought the game, there was none. Zero DRM. You buy it once, you can play it on multiple platforms. But, they know people will pirate their game, so they released a "cracked" full version of their game onto a torrent site for people to pirate. Here's the funny thing though. That version, you can not win. After a while, your games that you ship start losing money because people are pirating your game. You will always go bankrupt because of it. And whats even better is there are a lot of people writing them complaining, or trying to figure out how to fix it. if its a bug, or what. Some are even getting defensive, blaming the company, thinking its ok for them to pirate their stuff.
Here's their full article. check it out!
http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
Greenheart Games decided to create the ultimate DRM. If you bought the game, there was none. Zero DRM. You buy it once, you can play it on multiple platforms. But, they know people will pirate their game, so they released a "cracked" full version of their game onto a torrent site for people to pirate. Here's the funny thing though. That version, you can not win. After a while, your games that you ship start losing money because people are pirating your game. You will always go bankrupt because of it. And whats even better is there are a lot of people writing them complaining, or trying to figure out how to fix it. if its a bug, or what. Some are even getting defensive, blaming the company, thinking its ok for them to pirate their stuff.
Here's their full article. check it out!
http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/
Replies
Is.
Awesome.
Reminds me of the DOS era space empire game (one of the Pax Imeria games?) where pirated versions were unbeatable because massive enemy fleets with impossible hitpoints kept attacking you.
And I don't really see how it's the ultimate DRM when the real game has no DRM and only the fake game has a DRM, but that only applies if you download it from their torrent. I only see this working against people, who just download the first thing they see. Anyone who's not a complete idiot is not just gonna download something from a random new user
Yes I do understand that it's supposed to be a joke, but I'm just questioning how this is the ultimate DRM.
You would be surprised how often it actually happens.
We released GHostbusters with an impossible boss. Lots of studios do the same.
It's too bad they didn't make this game for mobile devices. I would consider buying it. I don't imagine it's too extreme for a mobile platform (based on screenshots), yet not a big enough draw for me, that I'd turn on my PC to play it.
You mean that companies release game onto torrent sites themself? If so yes I'm suprised, if not. I know it's pretty common for game companies to have fun with pirates.
I recall a game where if you had pirated the game, the player model would be an actual pirate, probably not something that would stop you from playing but fun as hell to hear about. I read about the Ghostbusters one, I liked it.
Its not the first time this ideas been used though. If i remember the latest Serious Sam (3?) would spawn an unkillable crab monster if you'd pirated; to add another to the game to the list.
That 90% isn't that uncommon, piracy on the android sometimes has similar numbers
By releasing the gimped version before anyone else, it's very likely to become the 'big' torrent that everyone uses.
Serious Sam 3 did this, it had a giant scorpion chase the player everywhere in the pirated version. In Arkham Asylum they disabled one of the jump moves, making parts of the game impossible.
This only works for public trackers and even then it only works for a very short time until someone has tried the game and posted a comment. I don't see how something like this can be used to protect their game, the only two thing I see is that the developers and everyone whos not an idiot will get a good laugh.
And the developers and their obscure games get some free publicity about the game from gaming news sites that will pick up about it.
Why can't developers go the Kickstarter route for AAA games? If you offer the pledgers exclusive access to stuff like alpha and beta builds or other exclusives (something like what World of Mass Development/project cars is doing), I think it would be possible to convince people to fund games that have long development cycles, if you can keep them engaged. Another incentive might be putting design decisions up for auction. The design option that gets the most pledges will be implemented into the game you collect that bounty. The rest get cancelled and they keep their money. That way, people can be part of the creation of the game and it's an additional revenue stream. You could sell the chance to name an NPC or design a weapon/armor/vehicle, which would engage the artists to participate. I could go on all day about things you could sell to people in order to fund your game that has nothing to do with selling the release copies.
@ambershee
And the hacker community fixed that issue in later cracks.
Many gamers actually sought out that version just for the extra challenge. It became a meta game.
I believe this was their response:
Very interesting social experiment
Chances are that people were just scrolling down the torrent sides, found the game and downloaded with no previous knowledge about the games existence.
$8? That is lame. But a lot are probably previewing the game. Is there a demo?
I will hazard a guess that a large portion of pirates are kids who don't have access to their parents' credit cards. Or money.
Then I realized it wasn't Game Dev Story I had just bought, which I loved on iOS. Now I feel like I just supported some ripoff dudes like Gameloft.
THE FUTURE
Anyways, this is a pretty interesting social experiment.
Bad idea, if you are willing to give some control to someone outside your studio you are much safer going with a Publisher. Look at what happened to the Skullgirls devs when they decided to give the vote to their backers link. The backers who didn't win actually tried to financially punish the devs and they weren't able to make payroll.
The article doesn't mention that any of the pledgers actually tried to do that. It was just Paypal flipping out in abject fear and taking action without cause.
It doesn't matter if it only makes it to the most public torrent trackers. If they can just keep "their" version of the "pirate" software near the top of the torrent lists, they've effectively won. All of the casual pirates will download their "doctored" version of the game, and essentially play a time-limited demo. It doesn't matter of a real pirate copy comes out later. They will have prevented the most damaging pirating, and possibly even gotten some valuable metrics from a non-paying audience.
Well theres already a working version out now and I'm curious, how are they preventing the most damaging piracy when they got the game free in the first place? What did they actually win? What did they prevent? People from getting the game for free?
They had some fun at the pirates expense and got a lot of positive press.
I think the biggest win is all the free advertising. Not from pirating, but from the media coverage of it and what not. No one knew about this game before. And I dont agree that priating is good for advertising, and i hate when people use that as an excuse to pirate. But, look at all the people talking about it now. And the number of people who have bought it now to support them.
I know and already stated that earlier, http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1830041&postcount=15
I'm curious how they're preventing the most damaging piracy with piracy.
That is what? That people pirate obscure games instead of buying them that no ones heard of?
I think the best policy is to ignore piracy or at most make a joke out of it - like a "Pirate Edition" subtitle. Just make sure the pirates don't cost you money in bandwidth or support.
The most damaging piracy is casual piracy. If a technically capable individual wants to spend 10-20 hours and flex a considerable degree of technical skill in order to crack your game and play it for free, you aren't going to be able to stop them. Moreover, it can be argued that by putting so much effort and expertise into circumventing any security precautions you've taken, they've earned the right to play your game without parting with their money.
But the number of people who are technically capable enough to do something like that, as well as the number of people actually willing to go to that much trouble, is very small. There are probably only a few thousand world-wide who actually care enough to crack games instead of just paying for them. That crowd is never going to be a threat to a game's sales.
Damaging piracy is casual piracy. It comes from people who aren't just adverse to purchasing the game, but who are too lazy to go out and buy it. These days downloading a torrent and letting it knab some software for you is incredibly easy. That is the kind of piracy that a developer would actually need to worry about. And that is the kind of piracy that a strategy like this is good at countering.
Standard piracy numbers? You got any REAL source for that or you're gonna refer to this obscure game getting a 90% piracy rate when they wrote the article and then decide that thats the standard in the whole industry?
But they aren't getting a working game, they automatically loose. If were gonna go by that logic, the real cracked version is actually less buggy. Which if I'm understanding you correctly is better.
But how does letting people download a "bugged" version of your game for free that you put up yourself stop the casuals? They aren't going to buy the game after finding out that they got tricked by the developers and are now a joke to them and most of the internet. They will just wait for the real cracked version of the game and download that.
Casual pirates aren't that discerning. They'll download whatever torrent has the most active users, because they know that torrent is the most likely to download quickly. As long as a company can keep their own doctored version near the top of that particular list, their version of the software is what will be downloaded by the majority of casual pirates. Even if some more interested casual pirates eventually get a properly cracked version, the company would have still been able to collect a large number of usage statistics from the pirates who initially downloaded the doctored version.
It doesn't matter if the casual pirates who got snookered still refuse to purchase the official version. As many pirates are fond of pointing out, those people probably weren't going to pay for the game anyway. And since the company was able to gather some data from them, at least they were able to get something of value from those deadbeats. And so what if they are now a laughing-stock? They should have been more careful in the first place.
At the end of the day, being taken for a little ride is the worst thing these casual pirates can complain about. Given the potential for viruses and malware that exists in some pirated copies of games, getting suckered into what amounts to a harmless timed demo is actually not such a bad deal.
No I don't have any on hand, just years of seeing indie devs say it hovers around 90%. Those are typically active numbers, the digital hoarders don't come into the picture but why care about people that download everything but never even run it.
Why so upset? I'm saying don't worry about pirates, it's going to happen anyway, that means not making DRM. If you can make sure that at least the casual pirates are playing a virus and bug free version of the game then they at least can't hurt your reputation.
It's funny that people who shout "It's not a lost sale!" get the most upset when I suggest that devs just ignore pirates because they aren't customers.
I'm just gonna be a bit rude here and tell it like it is. Piracy for PC titles is easily 90%+ regardless of game quality/price(indies/AAA). Publishers have plenty of stats, but its better to be silent about it than face the flames from people like you for examples. "Oh, is that REAL STATS?" "fucking publishers just making shit up" etc etc.
Standard PC piracy numbers is between 90-95%, sometimes even more than that (i know some games that had even higher piracy rates) You dont have to believe it, and I cant pull up some damn spreadsheet straight from the holy center of the internets untainted and pure to prove it, but its still true.
(and yes this includes drm-free goodwill-stuff aswell, i mean people are pirating the huble bundle were you pick your own price ffs)
But such a torrent wouldn't last for long as the one were discussing is getting replaced by a working cracked version. So such a trick would only work for a very short period of time making it a very ineffective way of preventing piracy. I've seen far better drm. For example crysis 3 took quite a while to actually get a proper working crack. And if you wanted to prevent piracy by potentional customers wouldn't a demo work far better then giving out a "broken" version of the full game for free?
There's nothing wrong with them getting laughed at, I'm just thinking about how they might loose customers who pirated the game and whom might have ended up buying it if they didn't become the laugh stock of the internet for 15 minutes.
I'm not sure where this "myth" comes from that all cracked games are filled with viruses. Yes some anti viruses detect some cracks as harmful I've never actually gotten a virus by downloading pirated games. I do know there exists torrents that have such things, but they are most of the time uploaded by a non trusted user on a public tracker. And if people are stupid enough to download a game thats called xxx.free.games.nude.video.virus.jpeg.exe I couldn't care less and they just have their own stupidity to blame for.
Of course you don't have any source or fact to back up your claim, expect the one where I'm just supposed to trust you because someone you knew told you. If we are going by the logic that 90% of the people pirate games does that mean Diablo 3 would have sold roughly 117 million copies?
Upset? I'm not upset and I have no reason to be upset. And I've never shouted "it's not a lost sale". I know piracy means loss of sales for the developers I'm not stupid even if you think so. Would you be so kind to not make up your own stories? There's no reason for that.
And you don't think those stats might be at all self-serving? I think if they stand to gain something by making up frightening numbers, they'd do it. I'd take that 90% claim with a huge grain of salt.
A time-limited version of the game is functionally identical to a demo. The only real difference is what you call it. If they distributed an official "demo" there is an expectation that they would pay for the server bandwidth to distribute it. Releasing a "pirated" version on torrents is actually cheaper for the developer. Being able to glean user information from the "pirated" version would also allow casual pirates to serve as unwitting beta testers, another benefit for the developer.
It's silly to think that they would lose customers who pirated the game. Those "customers" were less likely to buy the game anyhow. And if they really liked the "demo" verison that they attempted to pirate, nothing is going to stop them from buying a legitimate version. If they get their nose bent out of shape because they played a demo instead of the full version, tough noogies. If they don't have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the irony, they probably shouldn't be playing games in the first place.
There's plenty of promise and opportunity in using standard piracy methods, instead of trying to fight them. This company has taken a creative and constructive approach to the problem that benefits them, directly targets casual pirates, and doesn't detract from the experience of paying customers. While I would hesitate to call this the "ultimate" DRM, its a better solution than most companies have come up with.
Take it with all the salt you want, I'm still right. No, they are not self-serving at all, which is why you almost never hear about them. Because its not worth the fuss. And why would we lie to ourselves? How many publishers have you worked for?
I seem to recall the 90% mark is what the WorldofGoo guys reported as well--which was hilarious because when they were tracking that number WorldofGoo was actually available for pay-what-you-want... i.e. FREEEEEEEEEEEEE. Weird.
Back when I worked at ILE I heard some THQ guys throw around the 90% number as well--not necessarily in a 'sales lost' implication, but just a 'copies being played' way.
I dunno if that was true, but I'd believe it. This was eight years ago and at that time Steam was juuuuuuust beginning to gain traction. There were only a handful of triple A devs left working PC exclusive....all the rest had moved to console.
No, I don't believe it would have sold that much but I'd believe there are that many players. There are sources out there, I figure you're so worked up about it you can go do the research yourself.
I'm sure you aren't going to see public companies talk about it, they want their investors to think it's a problem they have under control with DRM and online stores.
Don't worry about converting pirates to customers - just do what the pirates always complain about - treat your CUSTOMERS like royalty.
You'll have a hard time trying to convince me that their claims aren't biased and they aren't lying to other devs, they're lying to general public in order to sway public opinion of the uninformed (i.e. congress). The GAO showed that the MPAA was lying about their numbers, how are the game industry publishers any different? They're no paragons of honesty and virtue. If you're going to insist that those claims are true and correct, I'd like to see the data and their methodology. Otherwise I'm inclined to not believe a single word of it because the source has a reason to gain for posting false data that favors them. And lay off the ad hominem, if you can't make a rational argument, don't attack the other person's character. Also, confirmation bias much? Your whole attitude says that you believe it because it fits your preconceived notions.
I never attacked your character. I asked how many publishers you have worked for, I can understand that people from outside the industry that havent shipped many PC titles and worked for publishers dont believe things etc. But they also have no clue. All the numbers I have seen and heard both from others and things you pick up here and there through the years in the industry points towards the exact same percentage area, around 90-95%. I also know one game I worked on was pirated more times during two weeks, from one torrentsite only, than our entire launchwindow sales (first two months). Like I said, I cant prove it, and the ones who can prove it dont want to, because angry shitstorm is bad PR even if they are right.
But anyway, hey we don't know, maybe the more popular a game is the less it's pirated. *shrug*
No kidding...